MIKE TYSON broke down in tears as he revealed how “bad motherf***er” Muhammad Ali inspired him to be a boxer.
Tyson, 56, has made no secret of his admiration for fellow boxer Ali, widely considered to be the greatest in history.
Ali, who died aged 74 in 2016, was a household name with his incredible fighting technique and confident manner.
Tyson himself was once considered to be the best heavyweight around, with punters even dubbing him the “Baddest Man on the Planet.”
But both Tyson and Ali paid homage to each other when they appeared on a US talk show in 1989.
Joining fellow boxing icon Sugar Ray Leonard on the Arsenio Hall show, Tyson and Ali both named each other as victors if they met in a hypothetical fight.
And on an episode of his podcast Hotboxin’, the encounter was brought up by Tyson’s guest, rapper Cordae.
He said: “It was like some talk show and you were like, still even to this day I like it, you were in the middle of your prime, it’s safe to assume.
“And they was like, who would win between you two and you was like ‘man every head must bow, every tongue must profess, this man is the greatest of all time’.”
This reminder saw Tyson begin to shed tears as he reflected on Ali’s influence over his own boxing career.
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Tyson declared: “Ali is a bad motherf***er… How can you see a motherf***er and the motherf**ker inspires you like this.
“Don’t even touch you, don’t even say a f***ing word to you. F**k man! To this day, I can’t figure it out, motherf***er!”
Tyson’s gushing tribute to Ali comes just days after admitting he “wanted to kill” opponents while on an American talk show.
Tyson added: “Just think about who I am. I don’t want to go back there anymore.
“I don’t want to be in that poverty state of mind anymore.
“Not from a physical perspective, I don’t want to be poverty-stricken here [pointing to his own head].
“The more you hurt them, the higher you go in life. That’s just my mentality, the more you hurt them, the more people love you.”
